“Yes: I’m being sent to a hospital at Lyons. But I’ll leave you my address.”
Campton lingered, unable to take this as final. He looked about him uneasily, and then, for a moment, straight into the physician’s eyes.
“You must know how I feel; your boy is an only son, too.”
“Yes, yes,” the father assented, in the absent-minded tone of professional sympathy. But Campton felt that he felt the deep difference.
“Well, goodbye—and thanks.”
As Campton turned to go the physician laid a hand on his shoulder and spoke with sudden fierce emotion. “Yes: Jean is an only son—an only child. For his mother and myself it’s not a trifle—having our only son in the war.”
There was no allusion to the dancer, no hint that Fortin remembered her; it was Campton who lowered his gaze before the look in the other father’s eyes.
VII
“A son in the war——”
The words followed Campton down the stairs. What did it mean, and what must it feel like, for parents in this safe denationalized modern world to be suddenly saying to each other with white lips: A son in the war?